On this day: Perth became Scotland’s seventh city | Albert Einstein was born

Published on 14/03/2013 01:39

Events, birthdays and anniversaries from 14 March

Close season for trout ends.

1647: France and Sweden signed the Treaty of Ulm with Elector of Bavaria.

1891: First subsea telephone lines laid across English Channel.

1915: The German cruiser Dresden was sunk.

1917: German army began retreat to Hindenburg Line.

1945: The heaviest bomb of the war, Grand Slam, weighing 22,000lb, was dropped by the RAF on Bielefeld railway viaduct.

1964: Jack Ruby was found guilty of killing Lee Harvey Oswald, alleged assassin of President John F Kennedy, and was sentenced to death. He died of a blood clot in 1967.

1965: Israel’s cabinet formally approved establishment of diplomatic relations with West Germany.

1968: George Brown resigned as Labour foreign secretary after objecting to the way the government was run – and the manner in which it reached its decisions.

1978: Israeli troops invaded Lebanon on mission Israel said was designed to root out terrorist bases.

1984: Gerry Adams, head of Sinn Fein, was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt in central Belfast.

1988: Iran and Iraq unleashed missiles on each other’s capitals as so-called “war of the cities” erupted.

1989: Israeli foreign minister Moshe Arens accused Palestine Liberation Organisation of worst atrocities since Second World War.

1991: Birmingham Six were freed after wrongfully serving 16 years in jail for 1974 Birmingham pub bombings.

1992: Eleven died when helicopter transferring workers from Shell Cormorant Alpha platform to nearby accommodation flotel, Safe Supporter, crashed in North Sea.

1994: Government rejected IRA demands for talks on Northern Ireland, saying there would be no negotiations until violence stopped.

1998: An earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale hit southeastern Iran.

2008: A series of riots, protests, and demonstrations erupted in Lhasa and elsewhere in Tibet.

2011: Figures revealed that the number of women given prison sentences in Scotland had almost doubled in the past decade.

2012: Perth became Scotland’s seventh city after winning a UK competition marking the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

BIRTHDAYS

Sir Michael Caine (born Maurice Micklewhite), actor, 80; Pam Ayres MBE, poet and broadcaster, 66; Jamie Bell, actor, 27; Jasper Carrott, comedian, actor, 68; Sir Robert (Bob) Charles CBE, golfer, 77; Billy Crystal, actor, 66; Quincy Jones, composer, arranger and bandleader, 80; Tessa Sanderson CBE, athlete and broadcaster, 57; Francine Stock, writer and broadcaster, 55; Rita Tushingham, actress, 71.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1804 Johann Strauss, the elder, violinist, composer; 1836 Isabella Mary Mayson (Mrs Beeton), author of The Book of Household Management; 1868 Maxim Gorky, author; 1879 Albert Einstein, mathematical physicist; 1922 Sir Kenneth Alexander, Chancellor, Aberdeen University 1986-96, principal and vice-chancellor, Stirling University 1981-86.

Deaths: 1883 Karl Marx, social philosopher and radical leader; 1932 George Eastman, photographic pioneer; 1976 Busby Berkeley, creator of film extravaganzas; 1986 Sir Huw Wheldon, broadcaster.